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Microsoft and Novell have been busily intensifying market cooperation, whereby Microsoft sales executives are now selling SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) subscriptions. Novell's Susan Heystee, tasked to oversee the partnership from her company's perspective, makes no bones about it that the success of this cross-fertilization has exceeded her expectations. The 200 corporate participants who joined the venture now include the likes of BP Oil International and China Mobile. Back in August, Microsoft had offered the partnership huge financial support.

Novell's part of the bargain is the Advanced Management Pack for SLES and Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. The monitoring and management tool should alleviate administering cross-platform systems and enhance the capabilities of System Center Operations Manager. Linux and Windows can be monitored through a single console. The completed Advanced Management Pack, along with the Operations Manager, should be released some time in the next year.

Novell meanwhile also released its Moonlight beta, a free Firefox plug-in implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight Toolkit that is supposed to create some competition for Adobe's Flash Player.

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